CL | Arsenal vs Borussia Dortmund | Tue 22nd Oct 19.45

[Rain Dance]

Didn't watch the game
but this is unacceptable, both the dribble (Ramsey?) and the pass to the dribbler (Arteta?) are school boy mistake or should I say Cesc era mistake.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.101greatgoals.com/gvideos/1-0-borussia-dortmund-henrikh-mkhitaryan-v-arsenal-gif/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.101greatgoals.com/gvideos/1- ... senal-gif/</a>

the second goal was also our mistake instead of brilliant play, why no one marked Lewandowski? Sagna was out of position, and there is no way Arteta can't get there.

But most of all, why Arsène is using that awful jacket again? this is absolutely criminal

 

[DJ_Markstar]

Wasn't disappointed in the performance, Dortmund are one of the best sides in Europe and we could have won it if things went our way.

Hopefully we sneak a narrow win at their place and decimate the other two. This group is still there for the taking in my opinion.

 

[gavboyle]

Arteta made 11 tackles in that match - WOW. Gibbs and Koscielny were also stand out performers.

Think our big guns failed to fire today, so much hype has surrounded Özil and Ramsey as of late and it was unfortunate that neither really showed up tonight.

Tonight's effort would've beaten most PL clubs and we could've snatched either a win or a draw tonight and it would've been justifiable. We were operating on around 60-70% tonight and we almost kept Dortmund in check. We need a pace merchant in one of our attacking wide positions against the big teams so with Walcott, Chamberlain and Poldi all due to come back I don't think we should be worried. I'm disappointed with the result tonight but don't think it will have a great bearing on the rest of the campaign.

Tonight, Andy Townsend said how our defense was prone to errors in the past and complimented us on how we have addressed that problem, but for me I still think we concede too many goals and goals that are preventable.

We shouldn't get to disheartened about this result, we must retain the confidence that we have been playing with as of late but I would also like to see some work on the training ground to prevent these avoidable goals.

 

[Camel]

We didn't bury our chances and paid for that. Dortmund was good, their pressing is second to none and it disrupted our game for long chunks of the match. Now we need a win or at least draw at Westfalenstadion.

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

To summarize - poor first half, decent second half, joke of a result.

I think we'll do better in a couple of weeks at their ground, and I'd rather lose a CL tie, than a League tie at the moment. We're still very much in the race for the knock-out stages. Nothing to be worried about, even though our unbeaten run has come to an end.

 

[redwhiteAustrian]

One thing to add is, that the Ref clearly lacked some sort of clear line in his performance.

How can it be possible, that he disallowes Ramsey's "goal" because of a minor push on Hummels before, and just a couple of minutes later doesn't send Lewandowski off for elbow-ing Koscielny?

 

[Vinci]

We overuse the right hand side, it's been like that for most our season. But why? The ball ends up with Sagna so often, who is pretty clueless in the final third.

Gibbs isn't a good crosser either, but I have more faith in him to make something happen than Sagna.

 

[TheLoneFalcon]

Too pissed last night to post. Put a prime Lauren and Cole in this team and we'll walk the league and be a force in Europe. Not playing the blame game, because there were a lot of poor performances and the players picked didn't offer balance. I don't care if I piss people off, our full backs are not equipped to contribute consistently to our attacks and get caught behind opposition attacks way too often.

 

[DanDare]

We are only balanced in terms off our use of the left and right flanks when Podolski plays on the left.

 

[TheLoneFalcon]

Also if Cazorla passes to Özil we win the tie, very surprised he didn't see him.

 

[DanDare]

Also if Cazorla passes to Özil we win the tie, very surprised he didn't see him.

Yeah but there's no point thinking like this. It's never ending

 

[tap-in]

Very disappointed, we could have at least got a point out of this and stayed top of the group. We started slow and our key players were all below par. Anyone who thinks we were the better team (say yes) based on possession in the 2nd half is kidding them selves. The positive to take out of this is that we can and have played much better than that.

 

[WengerFaithful]

Im not acting like Captain Hindsight as I was saying it all second half - why we allowed our Full Backs to be that high up the pitch time and time again is beyond me we where not chasing the game we where in fact level with one of the Top teams in Europe and a point would have put us in a comfortable poisition esp since it would have left us 3 clear of Dortmond.

I'm not saying dont try to go for the win as just before their break away goal we had them under pressure but we could have pinned them back without leaving the door wide open at the back. You watch back the second half their was a five minute period when Metz was acting as the Right Back leaving us exposed for the counter.Dortmond could see us pushed up and when they got the chance they knew exaclty where to hit us.

Immature tatics in a group as tight as this - Mourihno would have had no problem taking the point at home knowing that Dortmond and Napoli still have to play each other.

We could have got the 2nd goal without the need to leave no body at home - if your chasing the game it is a perfectly acceptable tatic the situation we where in yesterday its unacceptable failure of management to see the bigger picture.

 

[dka1]

Also if Cazorla passes to Özil we win the tie, very surprised he didn't see him.

Yeah that hurt, alot. When I saw him pass to Giroud I was like dafuuuqqq, perhaps he didnt see Özil like you said..I dunno, his shot was fantastic though.

Anyway I thought 2nd half we were pretty good tbh, we put Dortmund under alot of pressure and Im optimistic (trying to be!).

And f***k Lewandoski, f*cking c*nt, it had to be him, I swear if I hope he gets elbowed in the balls by a small guy, d**khead. Kos played it like a trooper though, if it had been neymar he'd probably still be rolling on the ground.

Well I can only hope we get 2 draws and a win in our remaining 3 fixtures. I mean its not out of the question to even win at Napoli, but winning at Dortmund seems nigh on impossible now. Ahh well, I still expect us to qualify but we will need to atleast avoid defeat to make it somewhat comfortable.

 

[Mitch]

Disappointing result considering we had most of the possesion and the better of the play through the majority of the game but couldn't capitalisee on any of our chances whilst the two chances they get they make us pay. Impressive performances from Giroud and Arteta.

 

[error_prone]

I think with Flamster, Walcott and Cazorla we are better team than Dortmund and Dortmund played in finals last year so this speaks alot about us this year. We just needed 1 guy(read Walcott) to counter them with speed and someone to ofer protection like Flamster. Ramsey is a nice guy and improved alot but he choked yesterday in a big game, he is more suited to the games against Norwich when you have time on the ball. Against a team like Dortmund you need players that will not make mistakes : Arteta, Flamster, Cazorla and Özil with Walcott and Giroud to make something happen. In premier league Walcott should be left out in favor of Ramsey.

I think this year we can play against everyone, but leaving Cazorla who is still our best player will not help us alot, even if he's not 100%

 

[MaestroCesc]

We didn't bury our chances and paid for that. Dortmund was good, their pressing is second to none and it disrupted our game for long chunks of the match. Now we need a win or at least draw at Westfalenstadion.

We pretty much didnt have any chances. We hardly created anything, both Rosicky and Cazorla's chances were outside the box and were due to good shots.

@LoneFalcon surely its the fault of the manager and the full backs. The FBs should know they are attacking too much and if they dont, the manager should see it and tell me them to calm it down a bit.

 

[HollandGooner]

We could be in trouble right now, because we need to play Napoli away and Dortmund away, we should have draw this game or we were needed to win this game, but this is football and anything can happend, but to be honest we have put ourselfs in a difficult package.

 

[eye4goal]

I'd play Rosicky/Cazorla deeper in Germany as they can deal with a high pressure game better than Ramsey. I liked how Cazorla was coming deeper and switching the play with long passes to Özil/Sagna on the flanks(Rosicky attempted that too but his accuracy was poor).

We've got to put a much better shift in Germany, so we'll need to do some rotation before the return leg

 

[Johnny_Blaze]

I thought a draw would've been a fair result, but I got uneasy when we started committing so many men forward late on, and seemingly forgetting Dortmund are an excellent counter-attacking team. It was deja vu. Wenger mentioned we should've been more cautious, but I didn't see him or Bould relay that message on to the players.

The worst part of the match was the fact we completely nullified their best players but still lost. The Armenian bloke and Lewandowski were handled pretty easily throughout the match until we gifted them goals, and Reus looked like a pub player who Mertesacker and Arteta were pushing around like a ragdoll.

Two of Dortmund's steadiest players were Bender and Sahin who dominated the midfield and who wouldn't even get into our team, which is hugely disappointing. Ramsey had an awful match and the distance between him and Arteta for the majority of the game was one of the reasons we let Dortmund's midfield have an easy time of it. Arteta was good, the central defenders were good, Rosicky was good and Cazorla and Özil had some beautiful touches.

Arteta-Flamini-Özil has to be our midfield for every CL game from now on. If Ramsey starts, then he has to start out wide and interchange with Özil like against Napoli. For me, Walcott must also be a starter, so it leaves Wenger with a choice of Ramsey or Cazorla for the second wide spot.